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Messages - eishiya
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1081
Pixel Art / Re: Tezca's 8-bit Style Sprite
« on: November 17, 2016, 04:28:41 pm »
Most games fudge their character collision boxes, and only have movable collision boxes for attacks. It's usually not a problem to have the hitbox and art not match slightly for a couple of frames.
That said, I think the animation could use a bit more work before you worry about hitboxes, and perhaps in working on it more, you can solve the hitbox issue. The character doesn't step forward, they seem to slide forward instead, and their cape feels weightless because there's (almost?) no delay in its motion compared to the character.

One solution to give the character more thrusting power for their attack without moving them too far forward would be to have them move backwards during the wind-up, so that when they thrust forward, they're actually very close to the starting position, while still looking like they took a big step forward. That can help you make a smooth transition to idle, too! It'll also allow you to have the cape move around more and show its weight and motion more clearly without having it move too far away from the character.

1082
Pixel Art / Re: First time making a big animation
« on: November 06, 2016, 09:22:07 pm »
I don't know how I'm gonna train myself to spot these things on my own, though.

Look at other people's animations (including frame-by-frame), and look at videos of real people walking as well. Pay attention to how the different parts move relative to each other, look for patterns, as well as features that make each gait unique.

1083
Pixel Art / Re: Kitchen and Moms Room
« on: November 06, 2016, 01:18:39 am »
Rounded/octogonal rooms might be rare, but it's very common to see rooms that aren't square or rectangles, but more like a bunch of rectangles super-imposed, such as L-shapes or blocks with corners missing. It's not uncommon to have weird angles, too. Rooms are rarely perfectly symmetrical. Symmetry might seem to make sense when you think of just a room, but in the context of a building with multiple rooms, it's usually impractical.
Check out the weird bedroom shapes here, the result of having to fit in closets and a bathroom.
Even this simple, blocky layout doesn't have a single room that's a proper rectangle. This example has some 45 degree angles, perhaps because the house is in an odd location.

While I doubt anyone expects you to become a proper architect just to make a game, thinking about how your different areas interconnect and fit inside a building can help you make a more believable location, one that feels like it could exist. It doesn't have to make perfect sense; it's perfectly fine to have some impossible architecture like rooms that are larger or smaller than the hallways between them would suggest, or overlapping spaces, if those would make the gameplay better. However, each individual space should feel like it's part of a larger building, and the occasional angled corner or L-shaped room is a great way to achieve that.

1084
Pixel Art / Re: Ye Old Tree
« on: November 02, 2016, 01:04:11 pm »
At this size there is plenty of space to play with the shape of the crown (why should it be symmetric?), as well as the shape of the trunk. Trunks tilt and twist, they have remnants of old branches. The scale you're working with is big enough to show that sort of thing.
Tree crowns are usually not one blob either, but instead multiple blobs in various positions. This example has very exaggerated, clear spheres that make up the crown (note they're not arranged symmetrically). These examples feel more tree-like because the clusters vary in size and are not as clearly separated. These examples are at a higher res than yours, but because these clusters are a large-scale feature, it's actually easier to get them looking good at your scale than it is to get decent-looking leaves.

I think this latest leaf texture is a big step in the right direction! The colours are alright except from that weird warm dark green at the bottom, I think the main problem is that the shape is so artificial and symmetrical, it doesn't correspond to the nice texture at all.

1085
Pixel Art / Re: Ye Old Tree
« on: November 01, 2016, 12:44:25 pm »
Try making trees with a bit more character next. Something asymmetrical, something with multiple clusters of leaves rather than one blob. Perhaps play with trunk shape too.

1086
Pixel Art / Re: Its hard
« on: October 26, 2016, 02:15:23 pm »
Don't worry about creativity. Instead, worry about how well the sprites do their job. Creativity often comes from solving the problem of things not doing their job well enough.

For example, it looks like you want pretty thin limbs, but how well would they read against your game's backgrounds? (Tip: if you don't have some art of how the background will look, get on that because it's very difficult to make effective sprites for a game without context.)
The black swirly and red antler creatures look like they belong in the same game, but the other creatures look like they belong in other games. What design changes could you make to feel like they belong together? If the art doesn't feel like it belongs in the same game, that is a problem to solve.
What is the story you're trying to communicate about each character with their design? If there is not a story, then what idea? Are the creatures friends or foes? I feel like I am looking at a bunch of random ideas that aren't trying to communicate anything to me as a player. What are the things the player should be able to tell from your design? How can you make those things clearer in the designs?

Figuring out what problems you need to solve is the first step to being more creative. Creativity doesn't happen in a vacuum. Hopefully the questions I posted will help guide your thinking in a useful direction.
Always keep the player in mind. What does the player need to know to understand and enjoy the game? How can you communicate that through the visuals? Often, it's possible to communicate much more than you might initially imagine, making things like text dumps about the setting/story and mechanics unnecessary.

1087
General Discussion / Re: Better Understanding Sprite Dimensions
« on: October 20, 2016, 12:31:48 pm »
Sprite sizes for 8bit and 16bit consoles had to be some number of hardware tiles in width of tiles. Note that these weren't the same as world/graphical tiles, hardware tiles were 8x8 on most of them, while most games used a graphical tile size of 16x16, so each tile was actually 2x2 hardware tiles. The sprite didn't have to fill up the entirety of its tiles, but artists usually made their work fill up as much space as possible to get more detail into the art.

Beyond working with specific files, they could be any size that could be rendered quickly enough and looked good.
For example, the NES could render 8 sprite tiles per scanline, and had a memory limit of 64 sprite tiles, this is why NES sprites tended to be very small and you rarely had very hectic, sprite-heavy scenes. If you made a 4x4 tile character (32x32 pixels, 16 tiles total), you already used up a quarter of your entire sprite budget for that frame, and half of your per-scanline sprite budget for 32 of your scanlines.
The SNES had higher limits for the number of sprites (and therefore sprite tiles) in memory and the number of tiles per scanline.

Beyond being made up of 8x8 tiles, there were also limits on total sprite size, though I'm not familiar with the specifics. However, I am pretty sure there were no limits on the sprite proportions, at least within the size limit. Mario was 2x3 tiles (16x24 pixels), for example.

Unless you're aiming specifically to follow some specific hardware limitations (in which case, look up the specifics), don't worry about the proportions. You can use multiples of 8 as a guide or to help get the feel you want, but even that isn't really necessary. You may want to limit yourself to 64x64px total, as that tended to be the limit in 16-bit consoles. They created the illusion of larger sprites by using the background layer and combining multiple independent sprites when needed, but mostly they stuck to smaller sprites for various reasons.
Beyond the hardware limit, there was also aesthetics and clarity to keep in mind - a very small sprite would be easily lost on the comparatively large screen (e.g. a 256x224px SNES screen), while a large sprite wouldn't leave much room for other information. Sprites that were 16px, 24px, or 32px tall were a pretty good size on the screen - easy enough to see, but left enough room for other sprites, a large chunk of the world, the HUD, etc. Larger sprites quickly "fill up" the screen, and even if other hardware limits weren't a problem, this would make the game unpleasant to play because it would feel crowded. For this reason, sprites were kept small, and only setpieces such as bosses were large.

1088
Pixel Art / Re: Made a Kefka
« on: October 17, 2016, 12:13:57 pm »
If this is meant to be an animation, wouldn't it be better to draw the whole thing out to get the motion feeling good before spending time adding all that detail?

1089
Devlogs & Projects / Re: Nissan d21 HardBody Advertisement
« on: October 14, 2016, 11:31:11 pm »
The realistic detailing on the front and back feels at odds with the cartoony proportions of the side view, it's like I'm looking at entirely different vehicles from different projects. Since it looks like you're paying a lot of attention to the details, why not go for more a realistic silhouette too?

1090
Pixel Art / Re: little friend
« on: October 14, 2016, 01:28:08 pm »
I'm sort of in the same boat as Raylon - this character's design feels so "cute for the sake of being cute and nothing else" that instead of finding it cute, I find it irritating. I think it being armless while looking like it should have arms (it has shoulders, pecs, and human-like legs) contributes heavily to that - it all just feels too calculated. The most effective cute designs are where the cuteness feels incidental (even when it's not), where it feels like a consequence of the character's features, rather than the features being a consequence of trying to be cute. That is, when the character's features all add up to something that "makes sense" (not in reality, but in the context of the character and its environment, if there is one). Because you have features in the design that suggest that arms should be a thing, it makes the lack of arms too conspicuous to be incidental. Making the armor have more obvious arm holes that just don't fit right (and the whole armor not fitting right) could help, if you want the "wearing armor meant for someone else" look.

I hope that made some sense.

Also, isn't this oekaki? It should probably be in the 2D & 3D section. That's assuming you're looking for feedback on the art at all. I can't tell.

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